The Procrastinator

It is so easy to put off the things we would like to do and think there is plenty of time left to do it another day. I think I spent much of my life procrastinating and assuring myself that I will do it next year when I am not so busy. The trouble with that train of thought is that the next year is often busier than the previous year and so on. One day you realise that you are not getting any younger and you still haven’t done something you really wanted to do.

That is the way I am with writing. It is something I have always wanted to do ever since secondary school. I attended English and English Literature in the year above my own year, and I remember the teacher telling my mother that I should be writing books. Somehow, life ran away with me and it wasn’t until 2015 that I crawled out from the thick fog and realised that time was running out. If I didn’t start writing soon then no doubt I would end up in a dementia ward with no books to my name.

I enrolled in an online Masterclass with James Patterson and this gave me the prompt I needed to make a start. I wrote White Lilies and it sat as a file on my computer for years, unsure what to do with it, or perhaps, not confident enough to do anything with it. One night I had a vivid dream which became Viktoria, and it was the first time that I felt I lived the book as I was writing and cried when it ended. I was determined to publish Viktoria as I felt it was unusual and special, and I still feel that way. I investigated various options and went with self-publishing through Amazon, so Viktoria became the first book I published. White Lilies followed though I admit it is my least favourite.

As of this time in 2024 I have written and published five books and I really hope that there will be many more to come. If only I had started much earlier in life, I could have had dozens by now. Better late than never.